The fundamental question this paper addresses is how to bring the information gathered in the field are brought to those using the data for their analysis. A medium for this are databases and many scientists create their own in many different ways. But how to make them reusable by other scientists in the best possible way is a huge task. As such this paper shows some general guidelines for the workflow of database creation and which steps should be taken in the future. It focusses therein on palaeo sea-level and ice-sheet data as they are used to investigate the development of the sea-level in the past thousands and millions of years.

This post should be an introduction to some other background posts, which I intend to write in the next weeks on further details of the paper. The topics I intend to write about are